26734

Stalin and Stalinism: a source-based exercise
Task 1
Read the following three sources carefully, considering their historical context. Can they be
reconciled? Make a note of any issues, contradictions or questions.
Source 1
I have no illusions about our having only just entered the period of transition to socialism, about
not having yet reached socialism. But if you say that our state is a socialist Republic of Soviets,
you will be right ... We are far from having completed even the transitional period from
capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid
of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that score, and we know how
difficult is the road that leads from capitalism to socialism. But it is our duty to say that our
Soviet Republic is a socialist republic because we have taken this road, and our words will not be
empty words.
V.I.Lenin, Report on the Activities of the Council of People's Commissars (11 January 1918)
Source 2
Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to hold high and guard the purity of the great title
of member of the Party. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that we will fulfil your behest with
credit. Departing from us, Comrade Lenin, adjured us to guard the unity of our Party as the
apple of our eye. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with
credit!
From a speech made by Stalin at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets (1924)
Source 3
"Uneven economic and political development," says Lenin, "is an absolute law of capitalism.
Hence the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country taken
separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and
organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the
capitalist world, attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, raising revolts
in those countries against the capitalists, and in the event of necessity coming out even with
armed force against the exploiting classes and their states." For "the free union of nations in
socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and stubborn struggle of the socialist
republics against the backward states."
The opportunists of all countries assert that the proletarian revolution can begin – if it is to
begin anywhere at all - only in industrially developed countries, and that the more highly
developed these countries are industrially the more chances there are for the victory of
socialism. Moreover, according to them, the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country,
and one in which capitalism is little developed at that, is excluded as something absolutely
improbable. As far back as the period of the war, Lenin taking as his basis the law of uneven
development of the imperialist states, opposed to the opportunists his theory of the proletarian
revolution about the victory of socialism in one country, even if that that country is one in which
capitalism is less developed.
J.V.Stalin, The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists (1924)
© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26734 Page 1 of 3

Task 2
Read sources 4-8 and use them to help you understand the Lenin and Stalin sources (1-3).
Source 4
Marxism starts out with the assumption that people's abilities and requirements are not, and
cannot be, equal in quality or in quantity, either in the period of socialism or in the period of
communism.
Speech by Stalin, 1934, quoted by Sidney & Beatrice Webb Soviet Communism a New
Civilisation? (1935)
Source 5
In Marx's letter concerning the Gotha program of the German Social Democracy, Stalin found a
phrase to the effect that during the first period of socialism inequality will still be preserved, or,
as he expressed it, the bourgeois prerogative in the sphere of distribution. Marx did not mean by
this the creation of a new inequality but merely a gradual rather than a sudden elimination of
the old inequality in the sphere of wages. This quotation was incorrectly interpreted as a
declaration of the rights and privileges of the bureaucrats and their satellites. The future of the
Soviet Union was thus divorced from the future of the international proletariat and the
bureaucracy was provided with a theoretical justification for special privileges and powers over
the masses of the toilers inside the Soviet Union.
Leon Trotsky, Stalin (1947)
Source 6
The cult of the state and worship of rank, the irresponsibility of those who hold power and the
population's lack of rights, the hierarchy of privileges and the canonisation of hypocrisy, the
barrack system of social and intellectual life, the suppression of the individual and the
destruction of independent thought, the environment of terror and suspicion, the atomisation of
people and the notorious 'vigilance', the uncontrolled violence and the legalised cruelty.
R. A. Medvedev an oppositional Marxist historian, writing in the Soviet era, responding to the
question ‘what is Stalinism?’. Quoted in Martin McCauley, Stalin and Stalinism (1983)
Source 7
Stalin probably read Lenin's works more closely than anyone else, and to greater effect. In so
many respects inferior to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, he succeeded in clambering
to the pinnacle of power precisely because he used as his chief weapon the 'defence' of
Leninism, and presented himself as the chief interpreter of Lenin's ideas.
Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (1995)

Source 8
In a more advanced phase of communist society, when the enslaving subjugation of individuals
to the division of labour, and thereby the antithesis between intellectual and physical labour,
have disappeared; when labour is no longer just a means of keeping alive but has itself become a
vital need; when the all-round development of individuals has also increased their productive
powers and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can society
wholly cross the narrow horizon of bourgeois right and inscribe on its banner: From each
according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
Source 9
Stalin, Lenin's Banner, Poster, 1933 / Credit: akg

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‘Under Lenin’s banner for the second 5 year plan!’ Poster by Sergei Senkin (1931)
Task 3
Using your understanding of all the sources, consider:

a. Why Stalin espoused 'Socialism in One Country'?
b. The nature of Stalinism?

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Stalin and Stalinism: a source-based exercise

© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26734 Page 1 of 3

© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26734 Page 2 of 3

Stalin, Lenin's Banner, Poster, 1933 / Credit: akg

Using your understanding of all the sources, consider:

© www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26734 Page 3 of 3

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